We have been testing the seed that we saved last year and found them to be sprouting ok, so will plant them this year helping cut our seed cost a great amount! Does anybody else save their own seed from year to year???---good time now to do cold soil germination testing! thanks; sonny

I just put 10-20 seed in a damp paper towel, seal in a zip-lock bag, and put it on top of the refridgerator.In a week or so, count how many sprouted. 5 of 10 = 50% germination etc.Even with old seed the amount can be increased to get a decent stand if you know the germination rate.

Best,MikeTractors are made to work!"A Cub will do as much as a team of horses,.. More in hot weather!" - C. W. Spradlin 1909-1994

Save some flower seed. Use almost all hybrid seed for veggies so saving seed not a good idea. Save some tomato seed for an uncle and ferment it so as to reduce possibility of disease but don't test before seeding since they are started indoors and I plant enough for even poor germination rate. Tesat old seed sometimes by the wet paper towel method. I just find it easier to buy seed for my few non hybrid. Good gardening. Vern

Bev has been growing the same tomatoes since 1985. It was open pollinated seed we received at a convention in Virginia Beach. It is a nice slicing tomato. She picks the first really good looking and tasting couple of tomatoes and takes seed from 2 or 3 of them. She also saves seed from plumb (egg) tomatoes that a friend called a German Plumb tomato about 10 years ago. It is larger and fuller than any plumb tomato we have ever grown before. It makes real nice "Red Gravy" ( sauce) as my Italian neighbors call it. Other than the above she saves pie pumpkins seed and nothing else. Some of her herbs are perennial. Bev is the gardener I am allowed to turn over the patch in the spring and pull weeds though. As long as I am the beneficiary of the results, What's not to like.

Bill

"Life's tough.It's even tougher if you're stupid."- John Wayne

" We hang petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office."- Aesop

We have been using old "new" seed from years past. Three year old seed still work well, with any "skips" replanted by hand, they are all planted that way anyhow, LOL! This is for the hybrids, plus they are kept in the freezer/refrigerator between seasons.

Saving asparagus and muskmelon seeds. Have several small garden plots. Mostly purchase started plants or buy small seed packages locally.

I have several female giant asparagus plants as well as standard asparagus. Previously didn't separate the berries before drying, then saving the seeds. Found out that some of the asparagus seeds planted in new plots were giant asparagus. Past fall was the first time I keep the berries from the plants separate.

Daughter is planning on establishing another asparagus patch. Will have her plant the standard and giant asparagus seeds in different rows. See what happens.

I have started saving my pea seed and have have good luck with it so far. My Dad saves all kind of seed. He picks it,dries it,shells and cleans it and puts it in the freezer until he is ready to use it. He planted some collard seed last year that my Granddaddy had put in a glass jar and put in the freezer and most of it came up.

If stored right, I don't know how long seed can be kept. I do know that when my wife's Belsha family came from Lauderdale County, Alabama to Shelby County, Texas in 1854, they brought everything they thought they would need. Brought peach and fig cuttings, and all types of seed. The seed was saved from year to year. In 1960, there was a drought here and my wife's great uncle Bib Belsha lost his entire corn crop, losing the seed stock brought from Alabama. It was sweet corn and was called shoe peg corn. I don't know what the professional name for it is, just that we called it shoe peg. The only thing left growing from the origional stock is the peach trees. They're called white peaches.